


The Story

by wandering_gypsy_feet



Series: Week of One Shots [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-04 13:23:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18344549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wandering_gypsy_feet/pseuds/wandering_gypsy_feet
Summary: In Braavos, a mother tells her children a fantastical story, full of villains and heroes and damsels in distress. Little do they know, it's not a fairy tale, it's much, much more.Sequel to The Gift.Second in the week of oneshots series!





	The Story

**Author's Note:**

> it's short, it's sweet, it's to the point, and i promise you're getting a very long one tomorrow. Still set in a weird alternate timeline that I haven't quite figured out. But these two deserve some happiness, yeah?

“A bath!” her daughter yelled.  

 

“A story!” cried her son. 

 

“First, your dinner,” their mother said firmly. They pouted, dejected, but ultimately bowed to their mother’s wishes. She sat them at the roughhewn table in the kitchen, dishing out the stew she’d spent the afternoon making. They were deep into winter, even here in Braavos, and something as hearty as stew kept them warm through the night. 

 

“When will father be home?” asked her son, always eager for his father’s return. She kissed his head as she brought crusty bread for him to eat. 

 

“Soon,” she promised. She wasn’t quite sure on the exact time. Some days her husband would be home before dark, swinging his children up high and making them shriek with glee. Other days she would be dozing in bed, trying to read by the candlelight to stay awake. The household guards he commanded could be exacting. 

 

“Will he be home in time to say goodnight?” asked her daughter worriedly. 

 

“I should like to think,” she said carefully. He didn’t like it when she made promises to the children he couldn’t keep. 

 

They ate in relative silence after that, eager to get the warm stew into their bellies. Their mother cleaned up as they finished eating, ordering them to the small tub in the tiny washing room. They went, scrambling with mad glee to clamber in. 

 

She heated water for their bath. A girl she’d once known hadn’t had to heat water for a bath since it had came from the hot springs naturally, but she was so adept at not thinking of that girl anymore she pushed her from her mind with ease. The water now hot, she took it to the washing room and filled the tub, ordering her children inside it. They splashed about, pretending to be a kraken and a pirate, dueling about on the high seas. She watched them with a faint smile. 

 

They might live in Braavos, but neither of them had been on a ship in their young lives. She had, once, to come here. She’d been wildly seasick the entire time, though the timing of her pregnancy had led to some suspicion that the journey wasn’t perhaps wholly to blame. Whatever it was, she hadn’t given it a second try. They had settled in Braavos and it was there they stayed. 

 

Once she was as soaking wet as the children, she ordered them out of the tub where she could towel them dry. Pink cheeked and clean, she sent them across the small house to their nightgowns, hanging by the fire where they would stay warm. She cleaned herself up as well, then went to go join them in the large bed where they slept. They both cuddled to her, calm and content now in the evening. 

 

“A story,” her son requested again, a bit more firmly this time. 

 

“Which one would you like to hear?” she asked them. 

 

“Knights!” her son shouted, while her daughter protested, 

 

“There were knights last night! I want to hear the story of the flower.” 

 

“That one is boring,” claimed the son. 

 

“I quite like it,” said their mother and the daughter stuck her tongue out at her brother. 

 

“Besides, it’s my turn,” she boasted, “and I’m the oldest.” 

 

“We will do knights tomorrow,” she promised her son, who relented with a frown. 

 

“Start from the beginning,” her daughter said dreamily. 

 

“Alright,” smiling slightly, the mother began her story. “Once upon a time, in a land far away but not so long ago, there was a beautiful king. He was the most handsome man in the land, but it was a mask. He was a wicked man, evil in every way. He was a bad king, and all of his subjects were scared of him, except one man. One day, the beautiful but evil king decided he wanted a bride, so he sent for the most beautiful women in the land to come to his castle so that he could pick. 

 

“It was a trap, for once the beautiful ladies were in his castle, they couldn’t escape. There was one princess that the bad king thought he would marry, but she saw through his beauty and into his black soul. She didn’t want to marry the king, so she turned to the only man the king feared. She told him that she wouldn’t marry the king, not when he was so cruel.

 

“The man had secretly loved the princess since he had retrieved her and he did not want her to marry the evil king either. So he promised her that they would sneak away when the king was not looking and run far away from where the king could not find them. She was very scared that the king would find out and punish them both, but he told her not to be frightened. He would protect her.

 

“The evil king told them that he was going to marry the princess off to an imp. She was so sad, because she wanted to marry her strong protector. But it was for the best, for when the princess was married off to the imp, the king no longer paid her any mind. So her and her protector came up with a plan. When the time was right, they would steal away. 

 

“Her strong protector was not a knight, but he was a good and honorable man. He saw how unhappy she was trapped in the castle with the bad king. He was in love with the princess but he didn’t want her to think that he was going to save her and force her to stay with him. But he didn’t know that the princess had fallen in love with him too. So he gave her a flower and said that if she loved him as well, she only had to keep the flower and give it to him when they stole away. 

 

“One day the chance for them to escape came. They were almost out of the castle when the imp came across them. He knew how unhappy the princess was in the castle with the bad king, so he let her escape. He even gave her money for the passage. And so they were able to get away. While they were waiting for a ship to escape on, the princess gave the flower back to her strong protector. She told him that she had fallen in love with him as well. 

 

“So the strong protector and the princess were married on the ship they sailed away on. They went over the shining sea and each day were further and further from the grasp of the evil king. The princess was happy with her new husband. They searched high and low for a special, safe place to hide away in. And when they found it, the beautiful princess and her strong husband vowed to stay there together for all time, just the two of them. To live happily ever after.” 

 

At the end of her story, both her children were fast asleep. She smiled and carefully extracted herself from their grips with the ease of a mother long practiced at this. She tucked them in, making sure that the heavy blankets kept out any hint of a chill. Then she got to work setting the small house back to rights, putting away pots and pans and shoes. 

 

These were the evenings she was most content. Fed. The children asleep in their beds. A sense of peace that she hadn’t felt since her own childhood, which felt so long ago. On a whim, as she cleaned, she went to the small bookshelf set into one wall. Books were something of a luxury, small but expensive. Even with her talents as a seamstress and her husband’s work, money was short enough that the majority of the books were those best suited to teaching the children their letters and sums. 

 

But on the top shelf, far away from where curious little hands could get it, sat a dusty, thick tome. It was a boring sort of book, a heavy volume on the Faith of the Seven. It was not the words that enticed her; she had long ago given up faith in anything but herself and her husband. It was something else inside it that brought her to it. She thumbed through it carefully until she found what she was looking for. 

 

It had been her mother who had taught her the art of pressing flowers to preserve them. Take the bud, lay it carefully in the center of the pages, and let the weight of the pages press it flat. She’d loved doing it as a girl, until it was almost a given that any of the books that sat in their library had flowers tucked into their pages. And that was what she’d done with this flower, years ago. She gazed at it steadily, a remnant of the only fond memory she had. 

 

“Wife!” her husband entered the front door and she snapped the book shut again. He saw what she was looking at and crossed the floor in several long strides, coming to stand in front of her with clear worry evident on his face. 

 

“It’s nothing,” she promised him quickly. She knew how he worried about her tendencies to dwell on a dark past. 

 

“Sansa,” he whispered, a secret, long ago name that only he knew. 

 

“I’m alright Sandor,” she whispered his name in return, stretching up to kiss him deeply. She had missed him. They saw so little of each other lately. “They just wanted to hear the story. I wanted to make sure it was still there.” 

 

“Ah,” he looked over at the bed in understanding, “imagine that.” 

 

“It’s a favorite,” she explained and he gave her another deep, imploring look. 

 

“You are not sad?” he asked, eyes searching her face. 

 

“Not anymore,” she promised and he nodded, kissing her once more before going to kiss the foreheads of his children. Sansa busied herself getting him a bowl of soup, taking his sword and hanging it by the door. He sat with a grunt and thanked her, pulling her so that she sat on his lap as he ate. She ran her fingers through his long hair to soothe him. 

 

“I don’t know why they love that story so much,” he muttered and she smiled.  

 

“It has it all. Evil kings, a noble ser, a beautiful princess.” 

 

“I wasn’t a ser then and I’m not one now,” he warned and Sansa smiled. 

 

“I know. But they don’t know it’s our story. They don’t know the dark things. They only see what I want them to see, namely you.”

 

“You always did love your stories,” he grumbled and she gave him another kiss. He loved their story too, he just never admitted it. 

 

It was their story. A clean, happy, bright version of it. Sansa never told her children about how Sandor got his scar, or why he was guarding Joffrey. She never told them that it was the death of their grandfather that trapped her in the castle, and she certainly never told them that she was an instrument, however unwittingly, in the king’s death. 

 

Perhaps one day they would understand it. When they learned about the history of Westeros, maybe they would piece the bits of her story together to understand just who and what she was talking about when she told them their bedtime story. But she hoped they didn’t. She hoped they never would. Over here, they weren’t Starks or Cleganes, hounds or wolves. They were simply another lowborn family, making a living in the city of the free. 

 

She mourned Sansa Stark. She mourned the girl who loved stories such as these, who only saw the bright, shining things. But now she’d learned that any shred of happiness came with a bitter, bitter sting. She had gotten Sandor, found her true love, but it had cost her everything. Some days it almost didn’t seem worth it. But nearly every day she was able to make her peace with it. 

 

“Come to bed,” she whispered, standing up and taking his hands. It helped, on nights when she was prone to remembering, to have him utterly distract her. It made her forget for just a little bit longer, until the morning sun rose and another day began. 

 

She was Sansa Stark. She was a wife. She was a mother. She was Westerosi, she was Braavosi, she was everyone and no one all at once. She’d been given pain, she’d been given gifts. She didn’t take any of it for granted. 

**Author's Note:**

> again reviews and sharing is love to a writer so please leave me your thoughts - I can't wait to share what's next!!!


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